


Catch and Release

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Power Swap, Doing a murder, Implied Cannibalism, Lonely!Martin, M/M, Timeline What Timeline, Web!Jon, canon typical spiders, canon typical worms, jon was raised by spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 21:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18213560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: Power Swap AU.Jon keeps finding Martin and Martin keeps leaving. That's sort of the point of them.





	Catch and Release

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cuttooth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuttooth/gifts), [RavenXavier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenXavier/gifts).



> This grew out of a conversation on Tumblr about how all the powers love Martin. Thanks to somuchbetterthanthat and cuttooth for the inspiration!

The spider is the first living thing Martin has seen in many days, and he studies it. Small, brown, agile; it spins a chaotic web between the stems of the plastic flowers on the cafe table, which glitters in the rare burst of autumn sunlight.

Martin sets aside his book and leans closer, prodding it with one finger; the spider climbs up onto his knuckle, unafraid, because it hasn’t got the mental capacity to be afraid of things like him. Martin, in turn, has never much been bothered by spiders, and he turns his hand so that it crawls across his palm. In all London they are two creatures that have crossed paths ever so briefly, and that is either marvelously unlikely or highly suspicious.

The spider draws a strand of silk between its legs and anchors it to Martin’s little finger, then rappels away.

He doesn’t bother trying to shake it off, instead going back to his book while the sun lasts. The city sprawls around him, silent and still but for the flickering shadows cast on the pavement by things Martin no longer cares to see. Even when the sun is hidden, the shadows remain

By the time he’s finished his chapter, the spider is gone. The tether around his finger remains, taut and insistent, and with a sigh, Martin follows.

* * *

Martin came to London young and desperate, and he drowned there, alone among eight million people. He remembers a time when he clung desperately to a handful of lifelines — work, neighbors, and of course, his mother, like a fish hook through his heart.

He doesn't really remember when he realized he could just … sink. That it would hurt less than continuing to struggle against it.

Just that, on the other side of drowning, there was a blissful, encompassing silence, and he was free.

* * *

“I have a phone, you know,” he tells Jon as he comes to the end of the thread, because of course that’s who he finds there, crouched halfway up the rotting stairs. “You could text.”

“I know that,” Jon says, though he is probably lying. “But they miss you.”

“That’s sort of the point of me,” Martin says, but Jon just laughs at him, short and sharp.

The house is Georgian, grandly ruined, too historic to raze but too complicated to restore. Jon’s spiders have garlanded the interior with silver webs that just match the silver in his unruly hair; they both glimmer in the faint gray twilight filtering down through the holes in the roof.

Martin makes his way to Jon without crushing too many spiders underfoot, and Jon reels him into an embrace without hesitation. More spiders boil out from under his clothes and immediately try to nestle themselves in Martin’s. Jon was just a child when he joined the Web, and sometimes he still acts like one, impulsive and needy and weirdly naive. Martin (who was at least old enough to drink when he gave himself up) hugs him back, and lets Jon tuck his head under his chin, rubbing his back through his moth-eaten cardigan.

“I missed you,” Jon admits, breath warm against Martin’s collarbone.

“I know you did,” Martin tells him, and brushes some of the cobwebs from his hair.

The spiders that aren’t trying to make homes for themselves in Martin’s pockets are busily wrapping the two of them in silk, as if that was all it would take to make Martin stay. Sometimes, deep down where his heart used to be, Martin worries that they are correct, and some day Jon will bind him up in a cocoon and keep him forever. (Sometimes, he worries that he might not even mind.)

“I can’t say long,” he says out loud, as much a reminder to himself as to the rest of the room's occupants.

“I know,” Jon says, and pulls back with a little smirk. “I’ll just have to find you again.”

“That almost sounds like a threat."

“It does, doesn’t it?”

Martin kisses him on the forehead and steps back, shredding the work of the spiders. For now, at least. “I brought you something."

Jon makes a face. "Not more poetry, is it?"

"Of course not."

Martin pulls out a copy of _The Stranger Beside Me,_ which he spotted on a table outside a used bookshop on his way here. Last time, he had sufficient warning to bring a copy of _The Lesser Key of Solomon,_ but this time he had to settle for true crime.

Jon snatches up the book and squints a bit at the back copy. (He might need glasses. Martin wonders if he'd had a pair, once, and outgrown them.) Then he scoffs. "Serial killers? Really?"

"Give it back, then," Martin says. Jon clutches the tatty paperback to his chest and just about hisses. "In that case, you're welcome."

"Your taste is appalling," Jon declares, but he ambles towards one of the darker corners of the house anyway. "Come along, I've got you something better."

* * *

Martin met Jon quite by accident, and even now he's not sure who called to whom. For his own part, he thought he recognized another drowning man, and by then Martin had gotten very good at cutting out hooks both literal and metaphorical.

He's still not sure what Jon saw in him, why he'd cast his web in Martin's direction. Just that he had felt an urge, like an intuition, towards a particular dark and dismal storefront, and found himself among the dust and debris and one very suspicious cocoon along the far wall.

"Oh," Martin said, as something began to scuttle in the darkness of the ceiling. "Oh, sorry, there's been — I've made a mistake."

The crawling shape resolved into a person, ragged and gaunt, barefoot in spite of the weather. He climbed head-first down the bare wall like a lizard and then pulled himself up to his full height, unimpressive though it was. "Excuse me?"

"I'm sorry," Martin tried to explain, "but you've got the wrong prey here—" As he raised placating hand, he noticed for the first time the silvery cobwebs clinging to it. He briskly brushed them away. "Yeah. Not what you were looking for."

The man sputtered and darted forward; his fingers were too long and thin, and his palm prickled roughly against Martin's wrist. "How did you do that?" he demanded.

It was the first time someone had touched him since he'd … since, and Martin found himself slow to pull away. "Do what?"

"You _broke_ my web," he said, a shade petulantly. "People don't _do_ that."

Martin tried not to chuckle at that. "Well, I'm not people, am I?"

He still thinks Jon is lonely; anyone who was raised by spiders would be. He still hasn't asked what made Jon see him as a likely victim, someone to control or someone in need of control. He's not sure he wants to know, honestly. Gift horses and all that.

* * *

Jon leads him further into the house; Martin stumbles a little, because Jon forgets that other people can't see in the dark or climb walls when the floorboards have rotted away. They pass Jon's collections: the clothes and books and other little treasures he makes his victims bring him as the mood strikes. Martin has to feel his way down a flight of stairs while Jon scrambles by over his head, and he's really, really wondering if this is all going to be worth it when Jon suddenly clicks on a torch.

There's a massive web in the corner of the cellar, studded all over with little cocoons, some of them still twitching. In the center is a shape that looks like a person but is not a person: it can't be a person, not with so many holes in it, not with all the little silver worms going in and out.

Martin briefly forgets how to breath.

"She attacked you, didn't she?" Jon whispers from somewhere behind him. "She _hurt_ you, at your old job. That gray place on the river."

"The Magnus Institute," Martin says, slowly. He glances at Jon, who is upside down; in the dim light he has opened all his eyes. "That was a long time ago."

"Not so long," Jon insists.

"Why did you bring her here?"

"For _you_."

And it's not that Martin cares, exactly. He remembers quite clearly what Prentiss put him through, but the feeling's gone out of it, leaving just a cognitive understanding of terror. The same way he worries, intellectually, about Jon, even if the emotion behind it feels muted and remote. (If it was at full volume, he isn't sure that he could bear it.) He cut those hooks free long ago, cut out his heart and left nothing behind but plain, functional muscle.

His body remembers Prentiss, though, which is why there's adrenaline singing through his veins now, telling him to run.

She sneers up at him now, trapped and bound, with spiders crawling over her and carrying her worms away as fast as they can emerge. "I remember you," she gurgles from her ruined throat. "Prying little eye."

"Miss Prentiss," Martin says, and manages a stiff nod. "You seem to be having a spot of difficulty."

She spits worms at his feet. Spiders swarm over them before they can react. "I know the spinners' song, and I have just as many children. They cannot hold us forever."

And suddenly, like lightning, Martin understands.

Jon drops to the floor lightly and bounces back up. (He weighs so little, even gaunt as he is, Martin sometimes suspects he is hollow inside.) "We don't have to hold you forever," he says gleefully, like he knows Martin's gotten the joke. "We just have to keep you still."

Martin pulls out his pocket knife, the one he'd started carrying after his first hideous encounter with Prentiss. She looks warily at it as Martin unfolds the blade. "I know you've got a thing about singing, Ms. Prentiss," he explains, "but I actually prefer a bit of peace and quiet."

And Martin has become very good at cutting free the things that tethered people. Whether they wanted him to, or not.

* * *

(Martin thinks, sometimes, that he could cut Jon's ties to the Web. They were old and went deep, but if he just knew where to cut, where to dig—

But Jon wouldn't want that kind of freedom, not after spending two-thirds of his life tangled up in something so much bigger than himself. And Martin isn't sure he'd want that kind of Jon, honestly, one without anything left to cling to and no reason to keep reeling him in.

Besides, he'd sort of miss the spiders.)

* * *

It takes all night, but Prentiss dies, and she dies alone.

Martin staggers upstairs by torchlight, exhausted but deeply satisfied. He doubts this place has running water, so he settles for wiping his hands on a rotten scrap of curtain. Jon's things are piled up haphazardly: a heap of clothes here, some random electronics there. Only the books are in any way organized, and Martin is pleased to see _The Lesser Key of Solomon_ has pride of place. Jon's library is the only thing he ever seems to take the time to drag from one squat to another; he reads widely and indiscriminately and that (mostly) makes up for the lack of formal education.

(Martin once offered him a trade paperback of Spiderman comics, as a joke, and Jon was so insulted he didn't find him again for almost six months.)

Jon is perched on a moldy armchair when Martin looks up; perhaps he's just that quiet, lighter on his feet than anyone has a right to be, or perhaps Martin had gone so deep into his own silence he'd left even Jon behind. "You could stay if you wanted," Jon says, and if he's trying to sound casual about it he's failing badly.

"Do you even have a bed?" Martin asks. "A mattress on the floor doesn't count."

Jon scowls at him. "Don't be pedantic."

Martin could argue about this, but he's too tired. "What about food? Aside from herself downstairs, because I doubt anything that's left is safe to eat, even for spiders."

"I'll be fine," Jon says, which isn't a yes. He slides further into the chair with a sulky expression. "Go on, if you have to."

He has to. That's how it works, how they both work. Traps and abandonment. Catch and release.

Martin walks over to the chair and tilts Jon's face up with a finger under his chin. He kisses him, slow and deliberate; he has been teaching Jon to kiss like people do, and Jon is an eager if not particularly fast learner.

"Give me a day or two head start," he murmurs against Jon's lips, and he feels them curl into a smile. "Just to be, y'know, sporting."

"Who said anything about being sporting?" Jon retorts.

"That sounds like a threat."

"It _is_ a threat."

Jon's hands are in his jumper, but Martin just wriggles out of it; it's stained with blood and slime and ichor, but the sleeves might actually be long enough to reach Jon's wrists. And if Jon leaves it behind when he moves on to another squat, well, it's not like Martin's particularly attached to it.

(That's sort of the point of him. Around Jon, it's hard to remember that.)

"Be seeing you," Martin says, and when he steps out of the room he steps into a deeper silence. The morning is bright and unexpectedly clear, and the streets outside the house are so, so empty.

There is a spider on the cuff of his shirt, brown and agile. Martin flicks it off; at the last second it releases a strand of web and balloons away on the breeze. _Come and find me,_ he thinks, with one backwards glance, and then he walks away.


End file.
